


Hokasanai

by orphan_account



Category: Fly Daddy Fly
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-10
Updated: 2018-12-10
Packaged: 2019-09-15 20:21:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16940058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Hokasanai（ほかさない）: not thrown away, Kansai dialect of Japanese





	Hokasanai

**Author's Note:**

> galerian_ash: Thank you so much for the prompts! I never end up writing/doing what I expect for Yuletide and this year was especially fun, writing for a fandom with *no* current work in it.
> 
> I didn't initially ship Sunshin and Suzuki but after reading your prompts and rewatching the movie I was totally able to see it. I hope the fic captures the heart of what you wanted in that relationship! Based on your letter, we like a lot of the same tropes.
> 
> Also, an unexpected plus of Yuletide, I got a LOT of Japanese practice, because I couldn't find a subbed copy of the movie, so while this fic is only 3000 words long, I promise the effort also included about 2700 MORE words of movie transcription and translation. I'm grateful for the Japanese practice but I have such a grudge against Kansai-ben and Okada Junichi's characteristic Kansai tough guy mumble, though! I swear I had to listen to everything he said about ten times before I could figure out what words he was even saying, never mind what they meant. Worth it, though. ;-)
> 
> On that note -- I have never seen this movie with subtitles, so I've attempted to capture the spirit of slang/dialect as best I can for my own translations, but I have not idea how that lines up with the official version. In particular, the word "oton" (assuming I'm hearing it right; what Sunshin calls Suzuki in the film) I have chosen to translate as "old man" rather than "Dad" or "Daddy".
> 
> I would like to take a moment to thank the English wikipedia page on Kansai dialect for helping me understand and translate the film, as well as for inspiration for the title of this fic.
> 
> Anyway, I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it and have a wonderful winter!

The rainy season came early that year, and Sunshin had been back home for less than a month before the grey weather descended. He found, to his intense regret, that rain bothered him more as an adult than it ever had in his teens, and he stayed indoors watching the water sluice past, rushing to attack the levees and sluice-gates before rolling out harmlessly into the bay. The days were quiet, and Sunshin found himself flicking his phone open and closed, anxious for no good reason.

Suzuki had messaged him two days ago -- Facebook told him Sunshin was back in town, probably Minakata, interfering asshole that he was. It had been four years; by all rights, the man should have moved on and returned to his nice, safe, ordinary life, and forgotten that he'd even known Park Sunshin. Suzuki refused to forget. He sent text messages and silly jokes and earnest birthday wishes and didn't seem to mind sporadic responses. Sunshin couldn't just ignore him entirely -- Suzuki would leave him alone if he asked, and that would somehow be even worse.

"Going for a run. You better be keeping in shape." Sunshin flipped his phone closed and shoved it in his back pocket. Screw the rain, he needed to think.

He was drenched when he reached the tree. The climbing rope was still there, miracle of miracles, so he went up it, hand over hand, relishing the burn in his palms and the ache in his shoulders. His body was still trustworthy, safe, the one thing in the world that he could train out of betrayal. For now. Sayano took a knee to the head two months ago and he hadn't been on a train since. Sunshin stretched out on the wide branch and stared up at the sky through the drifting leaves. The rain had stopped, but he still squelched as he lay back and looked at the sky. Blobs of water splashed down at intermittent and irregular intervals. The sky was a solid and opaque grey that made it hard to tell the time of day, promising more rain soon.

Sunshin felt the rope beneath him move and turned his head in surprise. Suzuki, dressed in a suit, umbrella tucked into his briefcase, was climbing up hand over hand to join him. Sunshin moved to the side, feeling dazed. It was technically still light out, too early for Suzuki to be done with the workday, no matter how heavy the sky looked.

Suzuki hadn't changed. He still wore a business suit more naturally than a sweat suit, his hair was still neat, his expression polite, and the strong lines of a his cheekbones still gave him a serious air. He pulled himself onto the tree, using his feet for leverage, but with none of the flopping awkwardness of his first attempts. He grinned at Sunshin, an unstintingly happy expression that took his breath away. "I do try not to forget everything you taught me."

Sunshin nodded, leaning back against the tree trunk in a forced slouch. He supposed he hadn't changed much either in the past few years, but he felt like he ought to have done better for himself, somehow.

"It's been a long time," Suzuki continued, still smiling at him. "How have you been?"

"Fine," Sunshin said, but he couldn't keep meeting Suzuki's smile. He was fine. He knew people who were a lot worse off and no one got to be all the things they wanted to be or have all the things they wanted to have.

Suzuki nodded. "You look healthy. Are you looking after yourself?"

Sunshin snorted. As if he needed help looking after himself.

Suzuki nodded again. "I know you're very strong, but you know I'm a worrier." Suzuki smiled at him as if this was his failing, rather than a strength, that he could bear to worry about things that weren't his problem and that he couldn't fix. "Haruka's doing fine, too. She'll be starting university in two years, can you believe? But she still has nightmares and gets panic attacks." He paused and then continued with the devastating, unassuming honesty that Sunshin never seemed able to brace for, "I get them too, sometimes. Dreaming about Ishihara catching me in a choke hold and never letting go. Haruka back in the hospital."

"That man tracking you down in an alley and stabbing you, and me never knowing what happened." Suzuki didn't look at him, but stared out at the city, an absurd salaryman with his umbrella and briefcase up a tree.

Suddenly the pressure of the stillness was too much. Sunshin jumped down. "Keep up, old man!" He took off running to the bay, feeling the misting rain drift around him. No one else was out running today, or walking, or anything at all, and the world was totally empty, except for him. And except for a ridiculous man with an enormous heart in a sharp suit, panting to keep up. At the edge of the cement look-out, Sunshin paused and threw a backflip for no reason except that his heart was too full and his mind was racing and he wanted for no reason to glory in the freedom his body gave him.

Suzuki, already winded, came to a stop and stood smiling widely as he shook his head. "I don't think I could learn that, but if anyone could teach me, I guess it would be you."

Sunshin gave a crack of laughter back. He couldn't imagine Suzuki free running, but he couldn't have imagined Suzuki beating Ishihara into the ground. Honestly, he couldn't imagine Suzuki standing in the rain for no more apparent purpose than to watch Sunshin try to outrun his feelings, and yet here they were.

"I thought you said you kept in shape? Why are you already out of breath?"

Suzuki just laughed.

"Well come on then." Sunshin held his fists up, half playfully, but also really wanting the release of fighting, to see if he's dreamed up Suzuki's ability to hold out at all, to make this interlude seem less like a Dadaist hallucination and more like the world he actually lived in, where people weren't reliable, weren't what you wanted, weren't THERE.

Suzuki's fists came up, shoulder and hip, guarding his torso properly. Sunshin ran at him, the same slow tackle he'd started with, five summers ago. Suzuki dodged to the side, with a clean right hook, still slow enough for Sunshin to dodge easily, but a good recovery to guard. He had been practicing, Sunshin thought in surprise. Sunshin's focus narrowed as he backed up, his brain letting go of the emotions and the stress to see only the here and now. Rain was relevant because it was slippery, sodden sneakers because they were losing traction, the fact the sneakers had been a gift from his opponent not at all.

It was short, of course. Suzuki was less out of shape than Sunshin might have expected, but he still only had five years of part-time training to Sunshin's dedicated obsession to physical control over himself and his immediate surroundings. It ended with Sunshin on top of his former student, pinning him with an arm to his throat, the same position they ended in that first, ludicrous training session. Sunshin was abruptly aware of all the differences: rather than flailing, Suzuki was trying to use his solider frame to buck Sunshin off. The body he held down was no longer entirely the soft frame of a salaryman -- Sunshin could feel hard muscles under his hips and fingers. Was he different himself? The body he saw in the occasional unavoidable mirror still looked pretty much the same, ragged and scrawny. Unavoidably, less stupidity on the old man's part meant he was also unable to avoid the parody of passion holding him down. Sunshin hadn't thought of that before, or at least only very rarely, the way Suzuki might look if he were pinned down for his own enjoyment and not for training.

He jerked back, leaving Suzuki to gasp his breath back and scramble to his feet again. This too was the same, the old man's determination to get back up again and again and again. Suzuki was panting, mud and rain and sweat sticking to his suit to his legs and shoulders, but his hands came up again, wary and careful, keeping his eyes on Sunshin.

Impatient at being so persistently watched, even if it was the right thing to do in a fight, even if it was just what he'd taught the old man himself, Sunshin ducked and tackled, twisting Suzuki into a headlock he couldn't get out of.

It didn't help. Looking down, Suzuki's physical reaction was clearly, shockingly visible through his rain-soaked trousers, and pressed up against his back, Suzuki must have inevitably felt Sunshin equal interest.

He abruptly released the older man, backing away. He couldn't take his eyes off him even as he longed to look at the ground, the sky, the rain-swollen ocean, anywhere but there. But some old habits died hard and you couldn't look away from a man you had just chosen not to choke.

Suzuki was staring back at him, not wary but astonished. His hands weren't guarding any more, but loosely held in front of him as he approached. Sunshin didn't react, didn't know where to start reacting. Suzuki smiled at him, that inexplicably sweet smile that ought to have been reserved for his daughter, for his wife, for all the things that were right and beautiful and perfect in his life. Sunshin's hands were shaking, and he couldn't move as Suzuki reached out to curl one hand into his hair and kiss him.

It wasn't the kind of desperate kiss the men he met at bars gave him, nor even the laughing affection he'd received from the friends he'd experimented with before he moved away. He didn't have words for the worlds of kindness in that kiss, that wanted nothing in the world more than where they were right now, standing in a rainy park, kissing in the mud.

He kissed back. Of course he kissed back, pressing up against the hard body beneath a foolish suit, as if he could pull the heart right out of this man and bask in its warmth forever.

He kissed back because it was a surprise and because he'd wanted to for years even though he hadn't fully realized it himself until today, boxing in the rain. He kissed back until he felt a hand on his hip and realized what he was doing and who with and he couldn't bear it any longer, so he shoved Suzuki away gasping because he never cried. "What the hell was that, huh? What was that?"

Suzuki gapped at him, that unattractive fish-face of confusion that he used to find so charming and frustrating all in one. "You're married," Sunshin shouted. "You're married and this is... this is... this is disgusting!" There weren't words for it, really. Cheating, to be sure, but cheating like he didn't think it wrong. In the open. With a man. A man who knew his wife and daughter, if only second-hand. Sunshin's chest clenched at the betrayal, because he'd really, honestly believed that Suzuki would be good and honourable and not like everyone else. Swallowing down hot tears and anger, he rubbed his mouth with the back of his hand and spat once on the ground.

Suzuki looked abruptly gutted, as if he'd only just noticed the betrayal he was committing. Sunshin wanted to be sick.

"Why disgusting?" Suzuki bawled back. He took a few deep breaths, and said, quieter but still distraught, "You don't have to -- I didn't mean to -- You can just say no and not call a gay kiss disgusting."

"Kissing isn't disgusting, you're disgusting!" Sunshin took a step back. Suzuki stayed where he was. "I thought you were better than cheating on your wife, but I guess I was wrong, huh? You might at least think of Haruka. Hasn't she had enough shit in her life without you being an asshole?"

Suzuki gaped at him for two, three breaths, then stepped forward, confident again, distress clearing from his face in a sudden burst. He stopped just as abruptly, raising a hand as if to cup Sunshin's face again. Sunshin couldn't help it; he flinched. Suzuki dropped his hand immediately, and said quietly, "Yuko knows how I feel about you. She's always known that I'm bisexual. She, we, we've always been honest with each other, even when we started dating. We both sometimes fall in love with other people. She told me I should kiss you years ago, but I thought -- I thought you were too young, too beautiful, too -- too yourself to be interested so I didn't. Just now I thought maybe you were, but if it wasn't me, if you don't want to -- it's fine, really. I'm sorry. That wasn't why I came to talk to you today, truly."

Sunshin gaped at him. Suzuki Hajime, salaryman, the most ordinary of people. Suzuki Hajime who took lovers with his wife's approval. Who let an 18-year-old beat him up daily one summer so he could make the world safe again for his daughter. Was it really so much more impossible? "Why did you come?"

Suzuki folded his hands and shifted back, awkward but not uncomfortable. Sunshin tried not to miss the ghost of his body heat. "To see if you were all right. To ask you to come to dinner, maybe. Haruka wanted me to, but I wasn't sure you'd want to. Just that. I wasn't sure if you were sticking around, so I thought at least I would like to see you once."

"Why?" Sunshin asked. "Why go to so much trouble? Surely you life is easier without a fuckup like me."

Suzuki laughed a little awkwardly. "Not really. I care about you very much, you know. I can't help it. To know you're safe for one night, safe and fed and looked after, that would be the best thing." He shrugged. "You're not a fuckup, either, but it wouldn't matter if you were."

Sunshin leaned back against the granite wall that overlooked the river and shoved his fists in his pockets. "I haven't graduated yet," he said to the pavement. "I couldn't afford to go back this semester either so maybe I never will."

Suzuki leaned next to him, some distance between them. Sunshin ignored the temptation to move closer. "It's hard to work while you're in school," he said, as if this was normal.

Sunshin shrugged the excuse off. "Nah, it's probably that I shouldn't have tried to go to university at all."

Suzuki paused for a minute, then asked, "Do you like university?"

Sunshin shrugged, scuffing his foot on the ground.

"It's not for everyone," Suzuki said, seeming to realize that Sunshin wasn't going to answer him. "Some people don't want work for a big company, or do want to do something that doesn't need a university degree. Rich kids are always sent even when it's terrible for them, poor kids are told it's not a good idea. Do you think you deserve going to university less than someone like Ishihara?"

"No. But maybe I'm too stupid, for somewhere like Waseda. The other Korean students want me to care about politics. Most of the political science students are related to one of the big political families. No one else wants to talk to me. Maybe I'm too much of a thug to learn to fight with words alone."

"I think you're very wise," Suzuki said after a moment. "I know you read and think a good deal, more than most people I know. You know most of the students at universities are just coasting through to get jobs as salarymen, at a place Waseda. I guess. That's what it was like when I was in school, but I wasn't at as prestigious a school."

"I should probably have gone to Handai," Sunshin said with ghost of grin. "All the kids at Waseda make fun of my accent. Minakata says they're scared of me."

"He's probably right," Suzuki agreed. "Kids always wants reasons to look down other people."

"Half the professors, too. But the other half -- they're why I've been staying. Why I want to go back when I can. I never knew there were so many people who wanted to talk about ideas. And books."

"You know, I hadn't thought of it before, but I could see you being one of those professors some day," Suzuki said suddenly. Sunshin looked over at him in astonishment and was surprised to see Suzuki watching him with a look that both wistful and fond. "I already know you're a good teacher, and you love arguing and studying and finding ways to improve the world."

"I don't -- that's crazy, old man." But even as he said it, Sunshin could see the appeal, dedicating his life to debating with people like Professor Sato and trying to beat some respect into all the horrid rich brats who thought they already knew everything about the world and maybe, possibly, someday, writing something that made people see properly the stupidity of poverty and government corruption.

"It's not. I look forward to seeing it -- Teacher." Suzuki smiled at him, bowing a parody of respect that wasn't nearly as much of joke as it ought to have been.

The sky had darkened as they were talking, the unnaturally early evening of a rainy day. "Will you come over for dinner?" Suzuki asked, bending to collect his briefcase. "Just dinner -- I'm sorry about earlier. I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable."

Sunshin looked at him, awkward in his muddy suit, incongruously clutching an umbrella. A man who wanted to kiss him, a man who cared about him. A man who, independent or in addition to those things, wanted to take him home to dinner with his wife and daughter, who wanted to see him, knowing all of this. It was baffling and wonderful, unexpected and terrifying.

As always, actions were easier than words. He reached out, closing the space between them, and kissed him, a leisurely kiss that was as much wonder as sex appeal. "Yes," Sunshin said when they finally broke apart. "Yes, I'll come for dinner."


End file.
